The Magnificent Ambersons

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was published in 1918, The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The protagonist of Booth Tarkington's great historical drama is George Amberson Minafer, the spoiled and arrogant grandson of the founder of the family's magnificence. Eclipsed by a new breed of developers, financiers, and manufacturers, this pampered scion begins his gradual descent from the midwestern aristocracy to the working class. Through it all, Tarkington masterfully traces his favorite themes of time and loss, of vanishing innocence and the corrupting influence of power; its touching and nostalgic record of a foundering horse-drawn carriage age and the inevitable rise of the automobile.


BOOTH TARKINGTON (1869-1946) was an American playwright and novelist, who along with John Updike and William Faulkner, was one of only three playwrights to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction more than once. Among his most popular works are Alice Adams, The Magnificent Ambersons, (adapted for the screen by Orson Welles), Presenting Lilly Mars, Monsieur Beaucaire, Penrod and Sam, Women, and The Ghost Story.